Lithuania recovers US army vehicle, soldiers' fate unknown.
After a six-day search, authorities in Lithuania on Monday recovered a US military vehicle that sank deep into a swamp during a training exercise.
It was taking part in a tactical training at a large training area in the eastern Lithuanian town of Pabrade, just 10 kilometers west of the border with Belarus.
The fate of four missing US soldiers remains unknown.
The US #M88 vehicle sunk into bog on #Pabrade military training ground in #Lithuania has been recovered last night.
Please note there’s now only confirmation of recovery of the vehicle but no videos and photos, and, most importantly, no information about the crew. It’s not because “it’s not there”, as some social media are speculating, but because of US embargo on information about the fate of their crew that will be only only published by US MOD likely after families are notified, which likely means mid-day US time.
Realistically, I think chances of crew evacuating from the vehicle after sinking are zero because at depth of 5 m the pressure on the hatches would be equivalent to 5 tons if it was just water.
The recovery operation was very challenging technically due to the weight of the vehicle (70 tons) multiplied by the density of the bog - not just water, but highly viscous mud. From what I’ve seen they’ve used two separate multiple pulley systems attached to two bulldozers which acted as anchors, plus two other M88 working as winches.
P.S. some channels are posting a historic video of recovery of some WW2 tanks from a swamp, which are unrelated to the M88 incident
Likely geolocation https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=12/55.024350/25.918087
